


Ice in Their Veins

by Noral_Covic



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-02-15 04:36:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13023351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noral_Covic/pseuds/Noral_Covic
Summary: Game of Thrones set in a modern Canadian city: Sansa Stark avenges herself on Ramsay Bolton with a Shelby Mustang instead of a kennel of hounds. Jon Snow accidentally gets himself put up for mayor in the next election. Arya Stark has just returned from an iffy stint in Europe. No one is sure if their brother Bran is on drugs or what. Petyr Baelish is that creepy social worker/now city-counselor no one ever did a proper background check on. And Cersei Lannister is that narcissistic mama who is the only person who doesn't realize all her problems are her own damn fault. Ironically,  I have replaced all persons with Game of Thrones characters, though I know people and events like these that have really happened...at least until I get to the zombies I guess. {Which is probably why I love Game of Thrones!!!}





	1. HIT AND RUN

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written anything fan-fic as an AU, so I guess where this goes will depend on feedback, and if anyone wants to read this!

 

Sansa Stark is no longer that little girl who believed in stories of knights in shining armour, and golden princes. The only man she ever knew who had real honour was her father, and if she ever told him the truth of what had happened to her, Sansa knew that Ned Stark would have spent the rest of his life locked away in jail for murder.

That is why Sansa had suffered what she had suffered at the hands of the Lannisters and the Boltons in silence. She needed to save her family. She had wanted to protect them, her father, her mother, Arya...

Ned Stark is dead now though.

Sansa knows no knight is going to show up and challenge Ramsay Bolton to a duel for her sake. No one even notices the bastard leaving the club with the tipsy little petite blonde on his arm...Not even the girl’s friends.

 _The girl is just another bar star trading affection for a free drink,_ Sansa knows how people see the situation, _and Ramsay looks like he’s not in her league, but he’s got money, nice clothes, so that must be it_.

Sansa sits back in her VIP booth at the club, a total ice queen. She doesn’t mind anymore if people call her a frigid bitch behind her back. She is a Stark, _and people read who you are in what you wear_ , Sansa has always believed, _and I am a lady_.

While her friends have mentioned that her penchant for Valentino couture--- floor length, long sleeved, and high necked---is too formal and modest for the Northern nightclub scene, and frankly, really expensive, and thus intimidating for most of the young men who frequent such places, Sansa’s view of it is that any man who can be intimidated so lightly does not deserve her time. She will no longer belittle herself, pretend to be someone else, or dance around trying to gain attention.

“Jeyne, give me your keys,” Sansa orders her pretty friend.

Jeyne is more than a little drunk. In her tank top and hip-bone bearing jeans, Jeyne had been bought more than one apple martini at the bar tonight, and having downed half a bottle of good Northern whisky in the parking lot with their good friend Jon before they’d even entered the club that evening, she’s in no shape to drive.

“Okay!” purrs Jeyne, snuggling into Sansa’s sleeve. “I’m getting tired anyways. There’s no cute ones here tonight besides Jon anyways!”

Jeyne will only call Jon cute around Sansa when she’s drunk. That is because Jeyne would never have looked twice at Jon in highschool. Jon’s recent, and unprecedented promotion to the head of the Stark Holdings Board had suddenly shone a spotlight on the bright and talented young man that, admittedly, Sansa herself had never exactly been kind to when their lot had been kids.

Sansa leaves the club supporting Jeyne with her arm. Jon is still at the bar with his friends Tormund and Sam.

 _He’ll assume we went home because the night was getting lame,_ Sansa comforts herself. _But being that it is a Friday night, Jon can’t exactly leave before the other board members. He’ll have to try and prove he has as much stamina as Lyanna, Willas, and Rodrick._

Before she exits up the stairs and into the night air, Sansa scans the scene for a sign of Petyr Baelish. _Probably lurking in some corner somewhere_ , Sansa shivers. Her ambitions have diverged from Baelish’s, and she wonders if he has realized that yet, and what price she will have to pay when he does see that the little bird he rescued no longer wants a crown, just to go back home.

The minute she spots Ramsay though, Sansa’s heart pounds in her chest, and a woman with the bones of bird becomes a creature with the senses of a wolf, tracking its prey.

Sansa’s little white hand unlocks the matte grey Shelby Mustang with a click of the key. She practically dumps a dozing Jeyne into the backseat, but takes special care to buckle her friend up.

Smoothing herself into the driver’s seat, Sansa turns on the ignition, but not the headlights. Slowly, she stalks a walking Ramsay and his prey through the abandoned night streets.

But Ramsay Bolton is no fool. He quickly realizes that he is being followed, and so, Ramsay abandons his drugged victim, almost kindly. He deposits the blonde, passed out on a bus bench, to avoid suspicion in case the car belongs to a cop.

Putting his hands into his pockets, and deeply annoyed that all his efforts this evening are being spoiled, Ramsay turns in the road, whistling to himself. They have nothing to pin him with, surely.

But Sansa Stark wouldn’t trust a judge and a jury for the crimes that bastard committed, that she witnessed, the girls he raped and tortured, and the one he drove mad.

 _I didn’t save them, and I could have_ , Sansa knows. She will always blame, and then excuse herself. _I was a child. And he told me he would hurt Arya...I didn’t know_.

Sansa knows she could have poisoned him. She wishes now, that she had just stabbed him. People would have believed her then, but too much time had passed for any charges to stick, and she had no proof now, only her suspicions.

 _No_ , Sansa assures herself, _I know what he is. I know what he does. And what he will do, if I let him do it again_.

She couldn't go back in time and speak up, and save Thea, but she could stop Ramsay Bolton from picking new victims.

Sansa Stark turns on the car’s headlights, switches them to the high beam setting.

Ramsay Bolton has to put his arm up over his face, and he squints through the light, blinded.

It is only then that Sansa revs the engine. Ramsay starts to run, but it is too late.

Jeyne’s car was built to go from zero to sixty. The hood of the car catches Ramsay, and he flies over the hood with a dull thud.

“What was that?” Jeyne stirs, befuddled, from the backseat. Just as suddenly, Sansa steps on the brake. Her heart pounds in her chest. Her hands won’t let go of the wheel.

“A deer,” Sansa’s voice is ice. “I hit a deer.”

“Oh!” Jeyne sobs a little, unaware that the girls are nowhere near Winterfell, and are still in the heart of the city.

“Don’t worry,” Sansa unbuckles her seatbelt robotically. “I’ll make sure it is out of its misery. And I will pay if your car needs work.” She cracks open the driver’s side door. “You don’t have to look.”

“You’re the best, Sans,” Jeyne goes back to quietly snoring. The pavement is dark and black. A streak of blood is on the front of the hood, where it is slightly dented. Sansa wipes the blood with the elbow of her dress as she cautiously steps around the side of the car. The only light is from the headlights, and a distant streetlamp.

Sansa is afraid to move but she has to see. She has to look. She has to know if he is dead.

 _If he isn’t, well, I’ll have to back up over him_ , Sansa sets herself aright and moves forward, determined.

But Ramsay Bolton isn’t dead.

There he is lying pathetically still. He is panicking, trying to talk, but he can’t.

Sansa’s silver heels click as she finds herself continuing to move towards him. It’s like there is a magnet between them. _I want to look him in the eye before I kill him,_ Sansa tries to explain this moving forward to herself. _I want him to know that it is Sansa Stark who will kill him, after all these years_.

Ramsay’s colourless eyes speak recognition.

“How does it feel to be completely helpless?” Sansa stands over her victim and taunts him harshly. Her silver Jimmy Choos are pointed at his face.

Ramsay’s eyes narrow, and somehow they still mock her with all the secret parts of herself they still hold.

 _He’s insane_ , Sansa realizes. Then she realizes she’d always known this somehow. _No one could do what he does with such relish, such manic joy, and still be sane._ Then... _I was going to kill you, but I think that would be too easy an end for an animal---a monster---like you_ , Sansa decides suddenly. Just as suddenly she realizes it isn’t enough that Ramsay alone should suffer. _Rose Bolton should suffer for the son she always knew was evil, and all those kids she never took proper care of, who were under her protection._ _Let her care for Ramsay forever._

“Not good I imagine. Here. Let me help you,” Sansa says coldly, lifting Ramsay’s head from the pavement with a sickeningly sweet smile.

Sansa took first aid. All of Ned Stark's kids did. She knows as she does so, that she’s just broken the bastard’s neck, and if he wasn’t paralyzed before, that now he will be a paraplegic for life.


	2. RUINS OF WHAT THEY BUILT WITH WORDS UNDSAID

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya stays home, can't sleep. Thinks about Sansa, Jon, Winterfell, The North, and the fate of Westeros. Jon comes home drunk, and he and Arya have some quality "those two" time before Arya realizes Sansa never made it home.

Winterfell belongs again to the Starks.

Well, it belongs to Jon Snow, leastways.

That was reason enough for Arya Stark to return home.

Jon was never like most of the family (correction---her family) expected him to be, just waiting for the chance to rip the rug out from under them.

...Because he hadn’t just invited Sansa, Arya, and Bran to come back and live with him. Jon had pretty much just handed Sansa the keys, back before Arya even knew the house was free. Even though the house remained in his name, Jon had insisted that it belonged more properly to Sansa and Bran, even if the law was not on their side.

 _Jon’s still living with us though_ , as far as Arya understands the situation anyways, _because Sansa needs someone to fix things, to manage the house, like father always did._

Truth be told, how close Jon and Sansa now seem makes Arya feel a little jealous, a little left out.

The two of them often stay up in their father’s old study, sipping whiskey from an antique old decanter Sansa had dug up at an auction house that had once belonged to the Starks. There, Jon and Sansa talk over their days, and go over what still needed doing, by the fire, one red head, one dark.

Arya was invited of course. No one ever kept her out of anything, told her to go to bed, or told her she shouldn’t be drinking at her age, but it just didn’t feel right to Arya. Somehow she’d find herself at the doorway, listening to Sansa laugh, as if Jon and had just said something clever or funny...and all she could understand of her feelings was a sense of dread.

Sitting with Sansa and Jon was alien.

_It was always me and Jon staying up late, sneaking whiskey, or talking by the fire._

_Also, Sansa never liked to go to auctions and used stores before she and Jon started hanging out._

No one is home right now. Sansa and Jon went out together to the club. Arya has a fake ID and everything, knows how to look older than her age, but it would be totally weird to sit with Jon anywhere near a VIP booth, and Sansa would never sit at a bar.

 _And Jon and Sansa would definitely want to know how a no one like me can get a fake ID_ , Arya acknowledges the fact darkly.

So Arya had decided to stay home but finds she can’t sleep. Peace is elusive, a stranger to Arya. The stillness in the house, the recent happiness in her life serves only to set Arya on guard. For any other person, it would be the coming troubles, the work to do, that would keep them awake late at night, but for Arya, such things only give her a firmer purpose, a reason to wake up.

These days it isn’t just Winterfell that needs to be restored and protected, but The North as well. Recently, Jon has even taken it upon himself, that the entire region of Westeros is in danger from over development, under-thought-out get-rich-quick-type projects, and the council voting for programs that push out drug addicts and the homeless without dealing with the under-lying issues for drug addiction and homelessness in the first place. Jon has made it known that Stark Holdings would do more honourable business despite being allowed by law to act tyrannically towards long-time tenants. He publically warned the council that their continued support of greedy property-management firms who are continually hiking rents only serves to push out the unique businesses that have made Westeros the great region that the council continues to market it as.

Of course, The North’s committee share none of Jon’s concerns for the rest of Westeros, but him saving and restoring Winterfell won him a lot of admiration.

Of course, people forgot it was really Sansa who brought in the deciding vote, winning over Council-man Baelish, who carried the Arryn Municipality, to a victory for Jon’s cause.

_How?_

Arya shudders, and then decides for the umpteenth time, she really doesn’t want to know. _The man is as old as our father, Sansa. Gag me_.

But deep down inside of her, Arya is proud of her sister, who seems to have realized at last, that there is more to life than having designer clothes, being in a lot pictures, and having everyone follow her twitter, and instagram accounts. _If Petyr Baelish could teach her that, then who am I to judge?_

Arya judges anyways. _Baelish can use Sansa but he can’t move Jon._ Arya smiles.

Jon and Arya are the same in that. If either of them see something as the right thing to do, then no amount of coaxing or suggestion will make them do other than what they know to be best. They were Winterfell, and Winterfell was them, all solid beams and stone, and heart of hearthfire.

 _At least she left the fireplaces,_ Arya sighs reaching up to run her hand over the massive solid carved limestone mantle that is well over a foot over her head.

Almost everything else that could be chipped out of the house or carried away had been, even most of the oak paneling.

For the most part, the great old houses of The North had fallen into ruin and decay. The large parcels of lands once allotted to elite families remain discernible, but not in their former grandeur.

Traces of these once-great estates can be established from the stone walls bordering certain sections of the The North, broken now, here and there, by a-few-to-a-dozen different driveways marking where a single plot has been broken up and developed. Usually the original main house remains, but a few have, sadly, been demolished.

 _Progress_ , Arya sneers, remembering what used to be.

These houses, often too big and expensive to run for the purposes of a single family household, have often been renovated into expensive bachelor apartments, or converted for use as hotels and bed-and-breakfasts. A few have been purchased and preserved in whole by foreign millionaires, and a professional hockey player or two. Very few, are still owned by the original family.

Winterfell had been a rather impressive example of those: a great house that was still run thoroughly as a family home, containing the line of the original progeny. Of course, the Starks had made some concessions, and most of their grounds and gardens had been sold off to the Targayens who in turn subdivided, but Winterfell remained, survived, one of the few remaining of the old houses.

However, after the death of Arya’s father, Eddard Stark, their mother, a woman who had never worked or managed a proper dollar a day in her life, had thought she could manage Winterfell. Doing so, Cersei Lannister-Stark scorned the wishes of her children, and the advice of close family friends; those who had cared for their home for generations and knew how much work went into keeping up a house like Winterfell.

The ghastly renovations Cersei had planned had been part of the extravagances that had nigh bankrupted the Stark family to ruin, and left Winterfell stripped to its bare bones. It was almost as bad as if Cersei had set fire to it...and that Sansa had, albeit, accidentally.

All that had remained until Jon had battled the city council to get a hold of it, were the stones, the charred plaster, stubborn wooden beams, and most of the floor boards. Ever since, he and Sansa had been working tirelessly on restoring it, section by section, as best they could.

 _Of course, Jon is the one sweating, lifting, carrying, bending, and breaking over the foundation of Winterfell, and Sansa is just there looking pretty, telling the workmen and craftspeople what to do and where to go_ , Arya sighs.

It is hard not to be bitter. Sansa could just smile and get them the money they needed to fix it, but Jon was pouring in all he could spare even if it bled him. Arya had found that she could do the work of any hired man, so long as the lifting wasn’t heavy, and she was quicker and neater than most, but that wasn’t on par with what Jon was putting in. For all the pretty smiles her older sister had thrown away on rich and stupid losers over the years, Sansa seldom smiled now, unless the Starks were in private, so Arya understood.

 _Odd actually, come to think of it, that Sansa went out tonight_ , Arya realizes.

Sansa had stopped making public appearances mostly unless they with Jon for Stark Holdings, or at The North’s committee meetings. She didn’t like to go out, and if she went to a club, she would just sit there with the curtain drawn, Arya knew. Closed away in her little VIP booth drinking something non-alcholic that she’d get her dumb friend Jeyne to sip from first, as if she were afraid someone were going to go all Borgias on her, that was good-time Sansa, these days.

Odder yet is that Jon is the first one home.

“Arya!!!!!” he hollers from the downstairs entry. Without tapestries and carpets to line the walls and halls, the sound echoes through Winterfell. The stone walls and flagstone carry the sound.

 _He sounds drunk_ , Arya laughs to herself. _He sounds happy._

There is a warmth to his voice even when he yells her name, that is lighter than his usual heavy, brooding way, and burdened, darker self.

Arya appears at the top of the stairs just to see Jon stumble a little, while trying to to take off his shoes. She descends as gracefully as the situation warrants, passing the stained glass window that bears the Stark coat-of-arms and family motto.

“You called, milord,” she mocks him.

He has propped himself up on the carved oak hall bench the Mormonts had gifted them upon the occasion of Jon obtaining the deed for Winterfell.

“Arya,” Jon says again, this time looking up at her, laughing through his dark lashes. “I can’t get my shoes off. I got one of ‘em off, er, but I can’t get the other.”

“Might be the drinking.”

Jon stops fidgeting with the laces to look at her, nodding, and disappointed a little. “So you’re not gonna...help?”

Arya tries not to laugh. “You’re a Stark,” she says with a straight face. “Starks can handle their liquor.”

“Aye,” Jon murmurs and then his eyes brighten. He says most seriously, “And their shoes I reckon.”

“Aye,” Arya finds herself speaking softly. _He must have had an AWFUL lot to drink_ , Arya knows, because Jon regularly downed whiskey, and not that she would ever admit it to him, but he was built quite a bit taller and broader than she was, and could put back more than she’d be able to, and still walk straight. Realizing that he is still staring at her like a drunken fool, Arya reminds him, “shoes!”

Jon shakes himself and put himself seriously to the task of throwing off the remaining shoe. After he has done so, he hops down from the bench.

...And then he swears, “Seven hells!”

The stone floor is ice.

Arya deadpans, “Yeah, it’s pretty freakin’ cold out. That’s why I’m still wearing my shoes if you’d notice.”

Jon hadn’t noticed Arya’s shoes. He just kept noticing, and that, at the oddest of moments, that she wasn’t eight years old anymore, and that scared him more than the idea of ripping off his own foot, or freezing to death in his own home.

“Why didn’t you light a fire?” He asks her instead as they head towards the kitchen. Then he wonders why she is leading him to the kitchen.

“Water,” Arya reads his mind. “You need water. Or tomorrow your brain will be shriveled, and all your blood cells sucked up. Or something. I kind of quit school, you remember.”

Jon is still waiting so Arya sighs. “I didn’t light a fire downstairs because we haven’t got approval from the fire department checker dude for the downstairs fireplaces yet, besides the dining hall, and study. And to be honest, I’m scared the guy will give us super bad news or something like our bedroom fireplace?-” Jon nods along. He knows she is talking about the room she and Sansa shared when they were little girls. “Well,” Arya continues dramatically, “if they say we have to pay for anything other than tiles and cleaning, it goes out of the budget, and I may just stab the poor fellow out of helpless rage.” Arya shrugs.

Jon doesn’t know if she is serious or not these days. Arya had punched a plumber in the face only a few days ago.

A tall glass of water is shoved under his nose. “I’m going to have to-"

“You’re going to have to-"

The two of them begin to say the exact same thing at the same time, both of them finishing with, -“pee a lot.”

At that, the two dark-headed figures sigh contentedly in the dim light of the kitchen.

Arya is too cheap to use a lot of electricity. Plus they don’t really know if the wiring is up to code, so better not to need inspectors for anything. Less they use the less that can go wrong...for now.

Neither says “I love you’ or ‘I missed you’. They just stand together content in the luxury of each other’s company, forgetting for a moment the seven years of baggage the two have been carrying set between them. Until Arya suddenly exclaims, remembering how drunk Jon seemed to be stumbling to take off his shoes:

“Seven hells Jon!” She smacks her head, and turns to him incredulously, as if she were the drunk one. “Did you leave Sansa at a night club with Petyr Baelish?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTES: First off....Okay, just so you know, I am running away a little bit (the tiniest bit!!!) from GM’s character set. In this story Cersei Lannister married Eddard (Ned) Stark, and is actually the mother of allll the Stark kids except for Jon. There is no Joffrey, Tommen, or Myrcella, because of this, and the incest thing with Jaime is gone also. If you are gonna hate me, hate away, but I did it to make my Cersei as wicked and realistic as possible, and to not get myself entangled in a million different points of view and all those diverging plot lines to weave back together. 
> 
> I have thus made Catelyn Tully-Stark the disapproving grandmother, Eddard Stark’s mother. Yeah... I know. But stay with me.
> 
> After Ned died, Arya ran away, and Jon was kicked out. Cersei got Robb and Rickon killed (I’ll explain the back story later if I ever get to that point in the story), and Bran injured. 
> 
> When Cersei bankrupted Wintferfell and the Stark name, she remarried Robert Baratheon for his money. After she gets Robert killed, she marries Jaime Lannister, a cousin of her’s. My Cersei is a Southern Belle from the U.S;) so she’s got a lot of charm to her poison just so you know.
> 
> Second thing is...Winterfell is a house. An important piece of luxury/heritage real estate. And The North is a big, fancy neighborhood. Westeros is the region in which the story takes place, like the city, and all the suburban little outer areas that comprise it.
> 
> ...Probably enough notes and back-story for now.


	3. Chapter 3

"I didn't," Jon answered back without hesitation, having all the honesty of a proper drunk. "She went home with Jeyne."

 _So she's Jeyne now,_ Arya gritted her teeth. "And was Jeyne Poole driving, because Sansa doesn't have a license Jon."  _And Jeyne Poole would never pass up the excuse of getting drunk so that she could fall all over you,_ Arya was more than pissed.

The idea of Sansa coming home with a drunk driver, or of her getting arrested sobered Jon as much as anything then could.

"Fuck," Jon rubbed his eyes. "I'll check with the Pooles." He began to rummage uselessly through his pockets for his cell phone.

"You do that


End file.
